"I shouldn"t have said it. In my young days we sometimes--It"s all different now."
"I don"t know, I could tell you things that would surprise you."
"No! Not about yourself?"
"No. At least--"
"Just as you like, Roger."
"It blew over long ago."
"Then there"s no need?"
"No--oh no. It was just--you know--the old, old story."
He eyes his father suspiciously, but not a muscle in Mr. Torrance"s countenance is out of place.
"I see. It hasn"t--left you bitter about the s.e.x, Roger, I hope?"
"Not now. She--you know what women are."
"Yes, yes."
"You needn"t mention it to mother."
"I won"t." Mr. Torrance is elated to share a secret with Roger about which mother is not to know. "Think your mother and I are an aged pair, Roger?"
"I never--of course you are not young."
"How long have you known that? I mean, it"s true--but I didn"t know it till quite lately."
"That you"re old?"
"Hang it, Roger, not so bad as that--elderly. This will stagger you; but I a.s.sure you that until the other day I jogged along thinking of myself as on the whole still one of the juveniles." He makes a wry face. "I crossed the bridge, Roger, without knowing it."
"What made you know?"
"What makes us know all the new things, Roger?--the war. I"ll tell you a secret. When we realised in August of 1914 that myriads of us were to be needed, my first thought wasn"t that I had a son, but that I must get fit myself."
"You!"
"Funny, isn"t it?" says Mr. Torrance quite nastily. "But, as I tell you, I didn"t know I had ceased to be young, I went into Regent"s Park and tried to run a mile."
"Lummy, you might have killed yourself."
"I nearly did--especially as I had put a weight on my shoulders to represent my kit. I kept at it for a week, but I knew the game was up.
The discovery was pretty grim, Roger."
"Don"t you bother about that part of it. You are doing your share, taking care of mother and Emma."
Mr. Torrance emits a laugh of self-contempt. "I am not taking care of them. It is you who are taking care of them. My friend, you are the head of the house now."
"Father!"
"Yes, we have come back to hard facts, and the defender of the house is the head of it."
"Me? Fudge."
"It"s true. The thing that makes me wince most is that some of my contemporaries have managed to squeeze back: back into youth, Roger, though I guess they were a pretty tight fit in the turnstile. There is c.o.xon; he is in khaki now, with his hair dyed, and when he and I meet at the club we know that we belong to different generations. I"m a decent old fellow, but I don"t really count any more, while c.o.xon, lucky dog, is being d.a.m.ned daily on parade."
"I hate your feeling it in that way, father."
"I don"t say it is a palatable draught, but when the war is over we shall all shake down to the new conditions. No fear of my being sarcastic to you then, Roger. I"ll have to be jolly respectful."
"Shut up, father!"
"You"ve begun, you see. Don"t worry, Roger. Any rawness I might feel in having missed the chance of seeing whether I was a man--like c.o.xon, confound him!--is swallowed up in the pride of giving the chance to you. I"m in a shiver about you, but--It"s all true, Roger, what your mother said about 2nd Lieutenants. Till the other day we were so little of a military nation that most of us didn"t know there _were_ 2nd Lieutenants. And now, in thousands of homes we feel that there is nothing else. 2nd Lieutenant! It is like a new word to us--one, I daresay, of many that the war will add to our language. We have taken to it, Roger. If a son of mine were to tarnish it--"
"I"ll try not to," Roger growls.
"If you did, I should just know that there had been something wrong about me."
Gruffly, "You"re all right."
"If I am, you are." It is a winning face that Mr. Torrance turns on his son. "I suppose you have been asking yourself of late, what if you were to turn out to be a funk!"
"Father, how did you know?"
"I know because you are me. Because ever since there was talk of this commission I have been thinking and thinking what were you thinking--so as to help you."
This itself is a help. Roger"s hand--but he withdraws it hurriedly.
"They all seem to be so frightfully brave, father," he says wistfully.
"I expect, Roger, that the best of them had the same qualms as you before their first engagement."
"I--I kind of think, father, that I won"t be a funk."
"I kind of think so too, Roger." Mr. Torrance forgets himself. "Mind you don"t be rash, my boy; and for G.o.d"s sake, keep your head down in the trenches."
Roger has caught him out. He points a gay finger at his anxious father.
"You know you laughed at mother for saying that!"
"Did I? Roger, your mother thinks that I have an unfortunate manner with you."
The magnanimous Roger says, "Oh, I don"t know. It"s just the father-and-son complication."